


on the dark side of the american dream

by liveonthesun



Series: saved too many times [3]
Category: Captain America (2011), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 08:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liveonthesun/pseuds/liveonthesun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and everything is dark and cold.</p><p>He lets out a breath, opens his eyes, and everything is bright and warm. Too bright, really, and not warm in any of the right ways, but he's alive and it's the future, so he takes another deep breath and moves forward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	on the dark side of the american dream

**Author's Note:**

> You will probably want to read the other two parts of the series before you read this. There will be one more part, but I already have it 75% written, so there won't be a months-long gap between them like there was here. School kind of turned me into a zombie for four months.

Steve is eight years old when his mother dies. The funeral is sparse — Steve, some members from their church, a couple of nuns from the orphanage he's living in now, a few of the women she worked with. It's the middle of winter and the church is dark and cold. He's had a pretty bad cold — but it's just a cold this time, thankfully — and he's pretty sure the nuns only let him come because they were afraid he would hurt himself protesting more than the cold would hurt him from being outdoors. 

He's glad it's small. He thinks he should wish more people had known his mother, had experienced her love and wisdom and joy, but he's selfish, wants to keep her to himself. Since she'd had to work such long hours after his father died, she tried to keep their home life just for the two of them as much as possible. It had always been just them and he wishes it was just them now.

He doesn't cry. He's done enough of that in the past few days. He sits in the pew between the two nuns, picking the lint off his pants and wishing they'd let him bring pencil and paper to draw on. He remembers how his mother would ask him every night what he'd drawn that day, and she'd listen so intently as he told her his stories of far off lands and magic spells and strange beasts. 

He doesn't remember what the priest says aside from the mass Steve could recite from memory. He's too far gone in his own memories of his mother to pay attention to someone else's.

The nuns don't let him attend the graveside service. He'd rather go to her grave by himself, anyway. He'll go during the summer with the rest of the story he was in the middle of written out for her and leave the pages there. He's sure she'll love it.

When he gets back to the orphanage, the boy who has the bed next to his is in the room, which is strange, because the other boys usually spend as much time out of the bedroom as possible. He smiles when he sees Steve, though, and asks, "Where have you been today?"

Steve is surprised the boy noticed he'd been gone. True, Steve has stayed in the room as much as possible since he got here, reading and writing, not really knowing how to begin getting to know the other boys. Steve hadn't thought anyone took much notice of him, though.

"My mother's funeral was today."

The boy's demeanor changes then. His face gets darker and his shoulders slump a bit. "Sorry about that," he says. "Funerals are horrible."

"Yeah," is all Steve can bring himself to say, because it's true, and that's all there really is.

"I'm glad you're not dead though."

"What?"

"Well, you've been sick and then suddenly you just weren't here, and I thought maybe...well, I was worried."

And Steve's not sure what to say to that. He's only been here for four days and hasn't made much effort to get to know people. He wasn't expecting anyone to care about him.

"I'm getting better, actually."

"Good," the boy says with a smile. "I'd hate for you to have to always be in bed. This place isn't too bad once you get used to it. I'll show you around when you're ready. I'm Bucky, by the way."

The boy holds out his hand, and Steve takes it, smiles for the first time in days, and says, "I'm Steve. And thanks. I'd like that."

 

*

 

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and everything is dark and cold.

He lets out a breath, opens his eyes, and everything is bright and warm. Too bright, really, and not warm in any of the right ways, but he's alive and it's the future, so he takes another deep breath and moves forward.

He meets with psychologists, reads modern history books, finds a team, and fights aliens.

It almost feels like sleepwalking, the way he moves through it all. He's always been a fast learner, even faster after the serum, and so he adapts, picks up the speech patterns and body language of this strange new world. But it's always an act, will always be an act, he thinks, and he says the words and makes the motions, but it isn't comfortable, in the same way it wasn't comfortable when he was first living in his new body.

He often dreams that he wakes up and is back in the 1940s. The serum, Peggy, Bucky's fall — none of it happened, and he's sickly and skinny and everything is normal again.

Less often he dreams that he wakes up and is still trapped in the ice and he scratches and screams until his fingers and throat are bleeding and bleeding and everything becomes red.

He keeps Peggy's dossier on the table next to the phone. Every few days he dials the number and then stands with his thumb hovering over the call button. He's afraid of everything and nothing at once. What if he calls to find out she's just recently passed? What if she can't talk? What if she doesn't remember him? Why does he even think he belongs back in her life in anyway?

Two days after the Chitauri invasion, though, his phone rings, and he doesn't recognize the number on his caller I.D. 

"Steve?" a woman's voice asks when he answers. She has a crisp English accent and her voice in clear and strong, but there's a hint of the shake that comes with age.

"Yes, this is Steve," he replies, and he knows who it is, but he wants to hear it, wants to be sure.

"Steve, this is Peggy. Peggy Carter."

And he feels everything — joy and relief and sorrow and longing — well up inside of him so strongly that he thinks he might sob. He swallows it down, though, and allows himself to just take joy in this moment, and turns the sobs into laughter. He hears her chuckle on the other end.

"Peggy," he says, "God, Peggy I'm so glad to hear from you."

"How did it happen? I saw you on the news yesterday. At first I was angry that they had put someone else in your costume and given them your title, but then I found out it was you and was even more angry that no one had thought to tell me." 

Steve laughs again, "I'm surprised you were able to find out. They've been keeping all intel on me so tightly under wraps."

He can picture so perfectly the smug grin on her face as she says, "There are three things in the world Nick Fury is afraid of. I'm second on the list."

"That doesn't surprise me in the least. What are one and three?"

And there's no doubt she's grinning as she replies, "Afraid I can't tell you that."

He talks to her for hours. He tells her about the ice, the future, about everyone on his team. She tells him about her work as a spy after WWII, the founding of SHIELD, her two daughters and son.

The longer they talk, the more weight lifts off his shoulders. He feels so easy with her the way he never felt with the psychologists. And while he's sad that he missed out on so much of her life, while there were so many things he wishes he could have been a part of, he's glad she's happy, glad life treated her so well, glad she was able to find love and live so fully.

They stop talking when he glances at the clock and realizes it must be well after midnight where she is, and she only laughs when he apologizes for keeping her up so late.

He can't stop smiling after he hangs up the phone and it's the happiest he's been since he woke up from the ice.

 

*

 

There's a picture of the man they're after. There have been whispers of sightings and rumors he's been sent to assassinate the President, though by whom, no one knows. A photograph had been sent to SHIELD that morning and Fury had called for a meeting almost immediately.

The photo is blurry and the man is wearing a mask, but Steve knows that face, would know that face under any circumstances, and there's no mistake that it's him.

"I know him," he says, and realizes Natasha says the exact same thing at the exact same time. They turn to look at each other, confused, and she raises an eyebrow for him to continue. 

"James Barnes," he says, "Bucky. We were friends growing up, fought together in the war. I saw him fall. I...I thought he was dead."

Fury stares at him with a stern expression for a few seconds. "Are you sure?"

"Unless it's just a consequence that this man looks exactly like him, I'm one hundred percent sure, sir."

"I'll have that possibility looked into then. Natasha, what have you got?"

"He was one of my trainers at the Red Room. I never knew much about who he was outside of that — where he'd come from, how he'd gotten there, what happened to his arm. I didn't even know his real name. He was just the Winter Soldier."

There's a heavy pause before Clint says, "I thought the Winter Soldier was a myth."

"Yeah, well. That's what a lot of people thought about the Black Widow," Natasha answers.

Fury takes a deep breath and runs a hand over his face. It's the closest Steve thinks he has ever seen him to being unnerved.

"I'm sorry," Steve says, "but you're going to have to fill me in here. Who is the Winter Soldier?"

"Bad news, is what he is," Fury answers. "And if we're dealing with a man who is the Winter Soldier and might also be James Barnes, we're in for a shitstorm."

When the meeting is over, Steve is so angry that he heads straight for the gym. He hasn't felt the need to punch something this hard since the first month he was out of the ice. It takes everything he has not to turn and punch holes in the wall on his way down.

Because if it's true, if that man is Bucky, if, as Natasha described, Bucky's been brainwashed into becoming this and killing all those people, then there's so much more that's his fault for letting him fall in the first place.

He loses track of how long he's been down there when he notices Natasha sitting quietly on a bench watching him. He stills the punching bag and turns to face her.

"Hey," is all she says.

"Hey," he answers as he starts to unwrap the tape from around his hands.

"So I guess our taste in beer isn't the only thing we have in common."

Steve huffs out a laugh and goes to sit down on the bench next to her.

"Y'know," he says, "I probably wouldn't be here today if it weren't for him. He stuck by my side when we were kids, insisted on telling the nuns who ran the orphanage when I started feeling sick, even when I told him it was nothing; got me into and out of so many stupid situations. And I probably wouldn't have been nearly as desperate to join the army if I hadn't been trying to follow him."

Steve looks down at his hands, remembering how Bucky's would envelop them when he was helping Steve fight through asthma attacks, thinking of how the size difference shifted after the serum. "Sticking with me is what got him killed, though. Or, captured, I guess. God, if I hadn't..."

"I wouldn't be here without him either," Natasha says, and Steve's grateful that she stopped him there, stopping him from blaming himself, but not outright telling him that it wasn't his fault. Enough people have told him that, and he _knows_ , rationally, that it wasn't, but it's a feeling he thinks he's never going to shake. "We had planned to escape the Red Room together, actually. But then he didn't show up when it was time for us to leave with Clint, and I had to make a decision fast and so I left without him. I don't know what happened to him."

"So we've both left him behind," Steve says, taking Natasha's hand in his and looking at her.

She gives him a small smile and says, "Strange fucking world we live in," then rests her head on his shoulder. "We're going to do everything we can to bring him in alive and try to help him heal, you know."

"Yeah," Steve says, giving her hand a small squeeze. And he doesn't want to think about the million other questions ( _What if it doesn't work? What if he doesn't remember? What if he doesn't forgive them? What if he does? _) on his mind, so he just focuses on the comfort of Natasha's presence as they sit in silence together for a while longer.__

__

__*_ _

__

__They're taking care of dishes after dinner. In the month since SHIELD let Bucky come live with Steve, they've been able to pick back up some of their old routines. And while Steve wouldn't say it's been easy, it's definitely been good — having Bucky around provides a familiar comfort, a feeling of home and belonging. They've each got far more than their fair share of baggage, but they've always been good at working together, and so every day it gets a little bit better._ _

__Steve hands Bucky the last dish and Bucky sticks it in the dishwasher. As he walks over to gather up the pots and pan, his hand runs over Steve's lower back. Growing up they had never had much of a sense of personal space between the two of them, and it had carried over as they became adults. Now, they've fallen into a pattern of familiar touches — hands on arms when they talk, heads resting on pillows in each others laps when they watch TV, standing close enough their shoulders touch when they're on walks. Steve had sometimes wondered, even back then, if there was any potential for it to develop into something more, or if it was all just friendly, the result of them having lived so close and having relied on each other for so much for so long._ _

__When Bucky brings the pots and pans over to the sink, he turns to face Steve. Steve turns to look at him and ask what he wants, but the words don't leave his mouth because then Bucky's mouth is on his. They stay like that for a few seconds, and Steve is pretty sure Bucky's going to make fun of him later for the smile on his face when Bucky pulls away._ _

__"Always wanted to do that," Bucky says and then turns to fill the sink with water._ _

__Steve has never been one to half-ass anything though, so he figures that if they're going to do this then they are going to do this right._ _

__He grabs Bucky's shoulder and turns him back to face him, bringing his hand to the back of Bucky's head and pushing him closer for another kiss. Bucky presses against him, his mouth opening against Steve's, and Steve bites at Bucky's lower lip, causing Bucky's breath to hitch._ _

__Then, unexpectedly, Steve feels his shirt coming up and there's a hand on his side and Steve doesn't mean to jerk back, but..._ _

__"Sorry," Bucky says, pulling away. "I'm sorry," he says again, "I shouldn't have..."_ _

__"No," Steve says, "there's nothing wrong. It was just cold and I wasn't expecting it. It's fine." And he takes Bucky's left hand, twining their fingers together and brings it to his mouth. He kisses each metal finger and then places it back at his waist, prepared for the feel of it this time._ _

__"So you're okay with this?" Bucky asks._ _

__"Yeah," Steve breathes out. "Definitely okay."_ _

__

__*_ _

__

__Steve wakes up and it's too early, really, so he rolls over and throws an arm around Bucky, planning to just close his eyes and go back to sleep._ _

__His hand brushes up against fabric and then grasps a waist he knows is too small to be Bucky's. He sits up and looks over to see Natasha curled against Bucky with her head tucked under his chin. Steve thinks that he should find it odd or disconcerting, but he really doesn't. She's become an almost permanent fixture in their apartment._ _

__He decides to get out of bed after all, takes a quick shower, and throws on jeans and a hoodie to walk to the bakery a few blocks down and pick up some pastries. When he gets back to the apartment he makes bacon and scrambles some eggs in the grease. The smell is apparently all that's needed to wake Bucky and Nat because they come walking into the kitchen as he's setting out plates._ _

__He's seen Bucky in the mornings more times than he can count, knows how he rubs his eyes and shuffles around, how his hair stands on end and his words slur. Natasha, though — he's seen her when she's been awake too long and is fighting to keep her eyes open, or when she's snapping awake and instantly fully alert, but he's never seen her on a lazy morning after a restful night's sleep. She's still just wearing a camisole and her underwear, and Steve's glad she feels so comfortable around them. Her hair is tousled around her face and she yawns every few minutes, her nose wrinkling when she does. She says, "G'morning," and pours herself a mug of coffee, then sits at the table quietly sipping at it for a few minutes before she reaches for a donut and starts picking at her eggs._ _

__He'd say she's adorable, really, if he didn't know she'd just roll her eyes at him for thinking that._ _

__After his first cup of coffee, Bucky opens the newspaper and they chat lightly for the rest of breakfast about the news. Natasha stands up when her plate is empty and takes it to the sink, heads back to the bedroom. When she walks by Steve she drops a kiss to the top of his head and says, "Thanks for breakfast."_ _

__She comes out dressed a few minutes later and Bucky walks her to the door and presses a kiss to her cheek before she leaves._ _

__He stands there for a moment looking at the closed door behind her, then seems to suddenly remember Steve is there and turns to face him, a shy, awkward smile on his face like Steve hasn't seen since they were teenagers._ _

__"It's fine," Steve says, because none of this morning has felt nearly as weird as he would have expected it to if someone had told him he'd wake up one day to find Natasha in his bed._ _

__Bucky smiles, looking relieved. He opens his mouth to say something and then pauses and closes it again._ _

__Steve stands up and walks to the couch, taking Bucky's hand when he passes him and leading him along. He sits down with his legs stretched out along the seat and pulls Bucky down between his legs, wrapping his arms around him and taking Bucky's hands in his own._ _

__"You still love her," Steve says, doesn't ask, because there's no question about it._ _

__"Yeah," Bucky answers. "And I love you, too, Steve, don't get me wrong. It's an _also_ thing, not an _instead of_ thing. You have me. I'm not running off."_ _

__"I didn't think you were going to. I get it, I do. I mean, god, I've thought about it before and I think if I was ever faced with having to choose between you and Peggy, god, I don't know how I would have."_ _

__Bucky raises one of Steve's hands to his mouth and kisses the back of it. "Well, back then we wouldn't have been an option."_ _

__"And now Peggy and I aren't so it's not a decision I've had to make. But, you know, I'm saying that right now you do have both options, and I don't want to make you have to choose. You and Natasha have about as much history as you and I do. She was there for you when I couldn't be. She knows parts of you that I will never understand. So, if you really do love both of us, I don't see why you shouldn't be able to have both of us. It makes sense."_ _

__And Bucky just laughs, and for a second Steve wonders if he's misread the whole situation, if everything he's just said is completely ridiculous. But Bucky just rolls over to face him, raises himself to his knees and kisses him, still smiling against Steve's mouth. "God, you're too generous for your own good, Steve, you know that?"_ _

__"Not really. Nat is pretty amazing. She's probably the only person I think I'd be okay with saying all of this about. This probably would have been a very different conversation if it had been, oh, I don't know, Clint."_ _

__Bucky laughs and his hands come up to cup Steve's face, and Steve leans into the touch of his left hand and turns to kiss the palm, the metal cool under his lips._ _

__When Steve turns back to look at Bucky, there's such a look of complete adoration on Bucky's face that Steve wants to wrap his arms around him, pull him in tight and just hold him close for as long as possible, because he _can_ now, and that will never cease to amaze him. He and Bucky have each other back again, and Bucky and Natasha have each other again, and while they're all living on second chances, they might as well take full advantage, because god knows if the universe will be generous enough to give any of them thirds._ _


End file.
